| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne: reduced them to a powder, which was administered that same evening to
Herbert.
The night passed without any important change. Herbert was somewhat
delirious, but the fever did not reappear in the night, and did not return
either during the following day.
Pencroft again began to hope. Gideon Spilett said nothing. It might be
that the fever was not quotidian, but tertian, and that it would return
next day. Therefore, he awaited the next day with the greatest anxiety.
It might have been remarked besides that during this period Herbert
remained utterly prostrate, his head weak and giddy. Another symptom
alarmed the reporter to the highest degree. Herbert's liver became
The Mysterious Island |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: "That's because you're generous - you can imagine and think. But
the spell is broken."
It seemed to poor Stransom, in spite of his resistance, that it
really was, and the prospect stretched grey and void before him.
All he could say, however, was: "I hope you'll try before you give
up."
"If I had known you had ever known him I should have taken for
granted he had his candle," she presently answered. "What's
changed, as you say, is that on making the discovery I find he
never has had it. That makes MY attitude" - she paused as thinking
how to express it, then said simply - "all wrong."
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: The cure of Mer had two or three thousand volumes. This treasure had
been derived from the plunder committed during the Revolution in the
neighboring chateaux and abbeys. As a priest who had taken the oath,
the worthy man had been able to choose the best books from among these
precious libraries, which were sold by the pound. In three years Louis
Lambert had assimilated the contents of all the books in his uncle's
library that were worth reading. The process of absorbing ideas by
means of reading had become in him a very strange phenomenon. His eye
took in six or seven lines at once, and his mind grasped the sense
with a swiftness as remarkable as that of his eye; sometimes even one
word in a sentence was enough to enable him to seize the gist of the
Louis Lambert |
